]]>https://replayablecontent.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/replayable-content-mxm-north-american-1v1-tournament/feed/0replayablecontentmxmtourney.pngThe Division: An unbiased opinion on Year Two, Game Development, and Comparisons to Other Gameshttps://replayablecontent.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/an-unbiased-opinion-on-year-two-game-development-and-comparisons-to-other-games/
https://replayablecontent.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/an-unbiased-opinion-on-year-two-game-development-and-comparisons-to-other-games/#respondMon, 13 Mar 2017 20:31:45 +0000http://replayablecontent.wordpress.com/?p=64Continue reading The Division: An unbiased opinion on Year Two, Game Development, and Comparisons to Other Games→]]>There is a TL;DR below, but there’s a lot of data in this post that may help people understand game development in general and allow people to see bigger pictures.

I was going to make a video based on this entire subject, and I probably still will but Matpat has a similar video and I would like to differentiate my points from his so I don’t copy him.Introduction

First I’ll introduce myself, I’m not known or anything really, I’m just a guy. I work in eSports, and I like to network and gather information. I tend to look at the extremely large picture, as well as explain things in their basest form. It’s my opinion that a lot of online criticism and arguments essentially whittle down to someone plugging their ears and going “la la la la I can’t hear you” and when someone tries to have an actual debate about something they get called a “cuck” or something like that. It’s just how internet culture is. I wish people could look at something like The Division objectively and really think about all the factors. I’ll start from the beginning of The Division. I will get to my point and try not to ramble from here on out.Year One Launch

The Division had a few years of marketing, I think it was officially announced in around 2008 that Ubisoft was working on a new IP. The first footage was released in 2013. The Division cost 50 million dollars to produce, this includes marketing, game development, licensing, manufacturing, etc. On launch day the box sales exceeded 300 million dollars. People tend to look at these numbers and assume that “Oh, they made tons of money, they can just create huge content blocks now.” but that’s not how game development works. You have the publisher, Ubisoft funding projects that are developed by a team or teams of people, in this case Massive. Just because they made 250+ million dollars in profit does not mean they have 250+ million dollars to play with. Ubisoft is a publically traded company and therefore has to watch out for the best interest of their shareholders, Ubisoft’s duty to them is to make them money. Having a game make 250+ million dollars in profit is great, that’s a 500% return on investment. Once the game is released, you need to look at how many players are playing it consistently. On launch day 117,000 players were playing through steam. 1 month later on March 31, that number decreased to 54,000 that’s a loss of 54% of the concurrent player base at peak time. This trend continued, losing roughly 50% of the player base every month for 5 months, stabilizing at around 10k concurrent steam users. You can extrapolate that data to the total sales and players across all platforms. Seeing as there were roughly 5.5 million copies sold ($60/game, divided into 330 million dollars) The player base went from 5.5 million on launch to 171,875 across all platforms. Factor in the next 6 months and players leaving, let’s say another 50%, this leaves 85,937 players currently playing across all platforms, steam users peak at around 10,000 daily currently.Amended in the next section.Platform and Current Number of Players

PC/Steam/uplay: 88,326 players Ranked this week

Xbox One: 147,947 players Ranked this week

PS4: 175,901 players Ranked this weekGame Development

With all of that information, we can now take a look at how game development works, the costs involved, and the return. There are 3 main categories:

Production and Development

Developer Salaries

Voice Acting

Music, Orchestra, Sound

Licensing

Marketing and Promotion

TV Advertisement

Print Media

Online Advertisement

Events, Launch Parties, etc

Manufacturing and Distribution

Optical Disc Production

Online Distribution

When it comes to DLC, we can knock Optical Disc Production off for online games, I’ll strike through it, but I wanted to put all the information there as a reference.

Massive is also only a 250 man team. That’s not 250 developers, that’s 250 total developers, marketing team, social media managers, management, etc. And you can look deeper into the term developer, 3d animator, 3d artist, 2d artist, sound design, motion design, etc. Not all 250 people are working on releasing content.

Perspective: Bungie 750 Employees, Blizzard 4,700.The Math

Now, remember how we’re down to 85,937 players? Let’s assume they were to create a massive content block and sold it for $40 just like Year One. If 100% of players were to buy this expansion that would net them $3,437,480. I don’t know what development cost of a large scale content package would be, but based on all the math we’ve seen, 3.5 million dollars is not that great of a return for 1 year of development. This is also assuming 100% of players buy the package, which is highly unlikely.Amended directly below.More Math

412,174 players, all buying a $40 package equates to $16,486, 960. That is ever single player buying it, as I stated before, which is unlikely. I don’t have the statistics on what percentage of the player base of a game is likely to buy expansion content. Let’s say that 70% of players buy the expansion, that brings our figure down to $11,540, 672. While this number is vastly larger than the initial 3.5 million dollar figure, it’s still not enough to justify a larger content block. This is a prettier number but still, doesn’t touch the returns of 500% on a 50 million dollar investment over 2 years. 11.5 million dollars is only 3% of the money they could make in 2 years based on the math. This is why games started creating premium shops, season passes, etc. it allows developers to give longevity to a game but players see it as a cash grab when in reality the game churn is the cash grab.

Now, if Massive and Ubisoft could come to the conclusion that given a small team to work on a series of larger blocks of content that the investment would be worth it, but how many people would be needed for that? These are numbers we don’t have. You need to pay writers, voice actors, sound designers, animators, 3d artists, 2d artists, the list goes on and on. It all racks up, which is one of the points of my post.Year One, Part 2

That sheer drop in players we saw at the launch of year one is something I believe could have been avoided, not entirely but, if not at least mitigated in some way. At launch there were many exploits, bullet king comes to mind. Hackers were also another reason a lot of players quit. A mixture of exploits allowing players to become wrecking balls and hackers one shotting you in DZ01 from DZ06 put into the minds that the devs were working far too slow to fix all this. I do believe that this was Massive’s fault, their Quality Assurance team should have spotted/fixed exploits and hackers should have been banned much sooner than they were. They also listened to the community too much and made changes at their request, and pushed them out fast. This caused tons more exploits, imbalance, and still some adjustments the community didn’t like (DZ reworks, etc).

By announcing the Year One content so far ahead of time as well, they backed themselves into a corner, they couldn’t devote resources to another type of project because they needed to accomplish the tasks they officially announced. How much of an uprising would there have been if part of the Year One content was scrapped for something of equal or greater value? With how the internet works, people would have been up in arms about it. I will stress, Massive always seemed very transparent, honest, and truthful when talking about anything on stream, forums, etc. What other game dev does a “State of the Game” style update EVERY WEEK?While I Was Gone

I quit before Underground. I came back and saw the Year Two announcement and bought the season pass. The content the provided over the year is a great amount and quite varied, I think the issues lie in the risk/reward systems and time investment/reward systems.

Variation

Underground: Modular dungeons with random objectives, modifiers can be applied to further change up the game, it’s unlikely to have the same experience twice when playing this.

Survival: H1Z1 but optimized and much more complex. I’ve been having a great time in here.

Last Man Standing: Structured 8v8 PvP with multiple maps.

I recently saw a post on the front page saying that adding a game mode isn’t new content. If it offers a new and unique aspect to the game, it is. When they do things like “Legendary” mode, that I will agree is not new content.

Year One, if they hadn’t been hamstrung by the sheer drop off of players, would have piqued the interest of a lot of players, allowed for variation in play, different types of players playing the game, etc. But as shown by the math, the player base is very low, I will get to a solution farther down.Year Two Announcement

People are understandably angry about the Year Two announcement, it was rather lackluster. They phrased everything very poorly, but that’s because as a developer you love your product and they want to share the details, even when you can’t share them all because of contracts. This led to information that didn’t live up to the hype that was created by announcing they were going to talk about Year Two. People also cherry picked a lot of what they said and didn’t listen to the full context. This isn’t the fault of the community fully, as I stated the announcement was lackluster. The fact that the devs during the Year Two announcement stated definitively that map expansion level increase, new talents, mechanics, etc are off the table hurt really bad. I think you could tell also in the way he spoke that they were disappointed and angry that it was off the table and that they just didn’t want to give it thought because they’re sad about it. This might be over-analyzation, though.Why Larger Scale Content Is Off the Table

Remember how earlier we were talking about only 85,937 playing, and if a content block were to be released it could only maximumly net $3,437,480? Which is highly unlikely anyway. Development is a time investment, as we already talked about what’s involved in game development, everyone has salaries or are contracted for a part of the project, there are costs in production and manufacturing, etc. Why would a Publisher invest a year worth of effort of a development team for $3,437,480? When they, in 2 years, could release a new game and have a return of 500% on a 50 million dollar investment? This is one of the main points of the argument I want to make, it is not the fault of Massive, it is the fault of Ubisoft, but it’s just business, they’re not doing anything wrong, it’s all based on perspective.Game Development Problems and Solutions

The inherent issue with the system is that a publically traded company needs to watch after its shareholders, this is always reinforced by data. Do you know what works? Creating a game every 2 years and having a 500% return on investment. The blame isn’t on Massive, they’re doing what they’re paid to do.

Problems

Publishers push game developers to just churns out new games for the highest return on investment every 2 years.

The player base has shrunk to the point where the return on investing a year’s worth of development might even operate negatively.

Larger scale content shelved for foreseeable future.

Solutions

The argument that’s always used, do not pre-order or buy games in protest. I know people always hear this argument, but it shows that players just won’t settle for a lack of longevity in a game. I hope with the full context of this post that people can fully understand what kind of statement this makes. Organizing 5.5 million people is quite the feat, though.

Get players to return, there’s a vast amount of content now that applies to many different styles of play. I will elaborate on what should be done in the next section.

Develop a revenue stream that allows for more flexibility in funding for larger scale content. I’ll elaborate on my opinions about this in the next section.

The Division Problems and Solutions

We can’t fix the past, we can’t go back and protest the game, we’re in a strange position. I think The Division release numbers justified a sequel in Ubisoft’s eyes, so that might be the plan. This is all conjecture, though.

Support revenue stream options like the premium shop (This argument is a whole other video, but the gist is, if the premium store is only cosmetic items why does it matter? It allows them to have a positive inflow of money to justify the content.)

Suggest ideas for the premium shop that you would buy to support the game.

Now, if we can do this and send a message this way, it might have an effect. Ubisoft might also cash grab this and churn out Division 2. Do you know what you do in that case?

Protest its release by not buying it or pre-ordering it and sending a message at a much larger financial scale.

This hurts the developers, yeah, which sucks, but money talks. If after that they try and cash grab with another product with another developer, you protest that too and just move to games with publishers that are willing to listen and allow the developers to work on an IP. I’m sure developers don’t like churning out loveless projects.TL;DR

Game development is much more complex than people tend to think about. It’s not that people are stupid, it’s just that people don’t tend to think about something at the base level and how business works.Conclusion

I hope I expressed my opinions fairly, in an unbiased manner, and concisely. I just want people to think about the larger picture and why things are the way they are. Please feel free to suggest any changes that should be made to this, any information I should add, or anything I may have gotten wrong. I know the math isn’t 100% there, there is some extrapolation and conjecture, but a lot of these statistics are closely guarded secrets in the industry and hard to draw conclusions on without insider knowledge.

My First Impression of The Division, what works, what doesn’t and what needs to be changed.Going into The Division I was expecting a Borderlands Style game, which now that I look back, I don’t know exactly what that entails. After playing The Division for a total of 38+ hours, I can say the experience was much closer to DayZ or H1Z1 done extremely well with a Diablo style loot and grind system and a middle of the road approach to hardcore PvP we used to see in Runescape, Diablo, etc.The Division feels like a third person survival game to me but with more tactical movement. Some people might not be a fan of the latch to cover system (the absence of jumping and crouching might also annoy people), but it works in The Division, it reminds me a lot of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.The problem a lot of games nowadays that go with the MMO/pseudo-MMO approach is that they run out of content quickly and are unable to produce content at a fast enough rate for their player base. Part of this is due to that players have forgotten that even games like World of Warcraft didn’t have tons of content on launch, they just happened to be the first of their kind and people were learning at the time which meant things lasted longer. The Division has a ton of content on launch, but I hope they can keep up the production of content as time moves forward. You have to realize we still didn’t see ½ of the factions in the Beta test, we haven’t experienced the full game yet at all. The event in the Beta with The Cleaners is a great example of how they could create content easily to keep players entertained while they try to pump out and expansion. Having Daily/Weekly community quests sounds like a great idea.The whole open world PvE and PvP, being able to stumble across players, it’s something gaming needs again. We’ve become so accustom to being able to hit a button and getting matched with a group of faceless individuals we just grind something out with and go our separate ways. Video games don’t seem to have communities anymore, no one socializes, but with The Division you’re forced to form somewhat of an Alliance with other players to brave the harsh battlefield that exists in NYC.Dark Zone PvP was what I personally have wanted in a PvP system for a while, I want there to be risk associated with getting better loot, it’s more rewarding. While a lot of people might not like the fact that you lose loot when you die in the Dark Zone but that’s the inherent risk. The whole purpose is that you need to be tactical, pay attention to your surroundings, and meet other players to work together to get the better gear. If you don’t like the fact that you lose items in the Dark Zone, you don’t need to play in the Dark Zone, there’s 4x as much PvE space.

Now to the things I didn’t like or might be afraid of in the future.

How will DLC and Microtransactions work? Are we going to have more content to play if we don’t buy the DLC or is it just going to be locked behind a paywall? I know it’s been stated the first raid is free and there are 3 paid expansions, this is a decent model if it stays that way. Perhaps allow players to play paid content as long as a friend owns it, similar to PayDay. This allows people to play content with friends, but incentivises them to buy it because they’d want to play it when their friends aren’t online.

Are cosmetics going to still drop on full release or are they all going to be microtransactions? I personally was disappointed with the cosmetic system until I ended up finding some clothes that made me look pretty unique, it ended up being one of my favorite features. Please don’t put it behind a paywall entirely, I’d be willing to buy cosmetics but if you lock the entire system out it would be incredibly disappointing.

Going rogue was a tad too easy, someone could be a jackass and run in front of your bullets causing you to go rogue. Shooting a turret once would make it go rogue and shoot the player that shot it causing you to go rogue. I’m not sure how to fix the former, you’re always going to have people being jackasses in video games, the latter is tricky because if you disable turrets going rogue, then a rogue player can just destroy your turret for free.Comparing new gear you just received was a hassle at times. It didn’t actively display all the numbers necessary to judge what was best for the build you were going for. Just a quality of life change here should be made, a list of all the stats on your screen when comparing gear would be useful.Positives and Negatives+A survival game done right, tight controls, great combat and gameplay+Right amount of grind, building up your gear sets will be awesome+PvP has the right amount of risk and reward

=No jump or crouch function-Surviving a Manhunt in PvP doesn’t seem worth it-Is DLC going to divide the player base too much?-Needs better ways to compare gear and mods-Some pathing glitches, not being able to walk over a curb, getting stuck on top of chests, etcFor anyone that likes survival games like DayZ or H1Z1 this game should definitely be a buy. It’s a nice spin on the concept and if the community is there the game has a great potential. Overall this is a buy for me, but for a lot of people it might be a wait to buy, seeing where DLC will be headed and if the community is still there after a month or two.Rating: Buy or Wait 1-2 months

]]>https://replayablecontent.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/the-division-impressions/feed/0replayablecontenttom-clancys-the-division-listing-thumb-01-ps4-us-02aug16What a long strange… oh wait… it’s been 3 years? And 4 before that? Well then…https://replayablecontent.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/what-a-long-strange-oh-wait-its-been-3-years-and-4-before-that-well-then/
https://replayablecontent.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/what-a-long-strange-oh-wait-its-been-3-years-and-4-before-that-well-then/#respondFri, 19 Feb 2016 03:51:31 +0000http://replayablecontent.wordpress.com/?p=52Continue reading What a long strange… oh wait… it’s been 3 years? And 4 before that? Well then…→]]>

If you throw enough stuff at a wall something will eventually stick, maybe this is that time. For anyone who might still be around, welcome back. To everyone new I’m Corey and I welcome you to Replayable Content, a project I’ve been trying to start for 7 years but had no direction whatsoever. I’ve finally found a great group of people willing to put in the work necessary to start a community centered around what we want to talk about. And while a lot of it is similar to our original goals, the new people involved are going to put their own spin on it.

We’ll still be covering games such as Dota 2, EVE Online, the influx of MMO’s recently as well as games like The Division, Gigantic, Paragon and more. You can expect a weekly podcast, gameplay and stream footage of the coming years games beta tests, and community events.

Are you interested in playing an MMO? Have you tried TERA Online? If you’re interested, play with us on February 5th, 2013 at 5 PM Eastern Time. We’ll be starting from level 1 and playing with viewers. Head over to http://www.twitch.tv/rpcyttrium, follow that stream, and get in game with us. We’ll be making all new characters from level 1 and helping out new players.

Hope to see you in game and on stream. -Corey

Please read the information listed below.

If you want to participate, contact us through the live stream starting at 5 PM Eastern time.

I was mainly waiting for my internet to be upgraded. We had to figure out some things, but we finally got it. I can now stream 1080p if I want to. I’ll be working on doing PR and advertising my channels when it comes to Twitch, YouTube, etc. But for now I’m going to list off some useful links for anyone who follows this blog or stumbles upon it. I’ll be listing off the main pages we’re going to be uploading content to and listing off some of our admins/moderators names in multiple games that we’re currently in to playing. Feel free to meet up with people that follow this blog by posting your game names in the comments.

At this moment we mainly play Dota 2, EVE Online, Forge, Guild Wars 2, Path of Exile, Planetside 2, Starcraft 2 and TERA. Oh, and course Moonbase Alpha (Mainly joking… but not really) You can contact any of us by using the list posted below.
Cpt. Pike (Cody)

After a year of sitting around doing nothing but play great games such as Dota 2, EVE Online, Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2, Scribblenauts: Unlimited, and many other games it seems I finally find myself here again. If anyone out there remembers, this was started as an idea 4 (or possibly even more) years ago. We had a short stint of content, podcasts, updates, and videos in late 2011-early 2012 but it didn’t last long. Due to internal complications and prematurely launching it was doomed to fail. I can say it was mainly my fault, I didn’t put the amount of work needed in to the site while others did, I of course wanted to put all of my energy in to the website but was unwilling. But here’s to another launch, a possible lift-off, and it will hopefully remain stable.